The debate about Electronics Recycling is about a correlation with poverty. From Wikipedia:
"
Correlation does not imply causation" (related to "ignoring a common cause" and
questionable cause) is a phrase used in
science and
statistics to emphasize that a
correlation between two variables does not automatically imply that one
causes the other (though correlation is
necessary for linear causation in the absence of any third and countervailing causative variable, it can indicate possible causes or areas for further investigation; in other words, correlation is a hint).
[1][2]
The opposite belief,
correlation proves causation, is a
logical fallacy by which two events that occur
together are claimed to have a cause-and-effect relationship. The fallacy is also known as
cum hoc ergo propter hoc (
Latin for "with this, therefore because of this") and
false cause. It is a common fallacy in which it is assumed that, because two things or events occur together, one must be the cause of the other. By contrast, the fallacy,
post hoc ergo propter hoc, requires that one event occur
after the other, and so may be considered a related fallacy.
Most of the debate about globalization comes down to trade between "rich" and "poor". Yes, there are certainly economic incentives to move lower wage and higher polluting activities to places (note a place is not a nation) where unemployment is high and environmental enforcement is low. Basel Action Network and Greenpeace have this as a foundation in their proposal to ban trade in used recyclables and repairables between OECD countries (roughly 1 billion) and non-OECD (roughly 6 billion) people.
There is a lack of organic waste from food leftovers in poor nations... Perhaps if we waste more food, we will increase wealth. The fact that the poor eat every scrap of food does not mean that eating increases starvation. It is a stupid, banal example. But it also demonstrates ten years of debate about scrap recycling, and why scraps are exported from rich to poor countries.
Here is a link to a site "Poor Economics", which I've found but haven't exploited yet.
Think Again, Again
Poverty and development can sometimes feel like overwhelming issues – the scale is daunting, the problems grand. Ideology drives a lot of policies, and even the most well-intentioned ideas can get bogged down by ignorance of ground-level realities and inertia at the level of the implementer...
In fact, we call these the “three I’s” – ideology, ignorance, inertia – the three main reasons policies may not work and aid is not always effective.
But there’s no reason to lose hope. Incremental, real change can be made. Sometimes the change seems small, but by identifying real world success stories, facing up to real world failures, and understanding why the poor make the choices they make, we can find the right levers to push to free the poor of the hidden traps that keep them behind.
The dialogue is refreshing, the discussion seems to be open minded. I found it while searching for a map of world poverty (by nation, not pixelized by slum-to-ghetto-to-emerging city). The map is also a pretty good predictor of where someone would invest in hard rock metal mining, and where you'd find scrap recycled down to the bone.
The incentives for the trade / exchange between rich and poor do not necessarily represent the cause the problems associated with poverty any more than medicine causes (correlates to) disease. When I lived in Africa, the most likely cause of death for children was fever (malaria), and the most likely cause of death of women was childbirth, and the most likely cause of death for men was accident, violence, or trauma.
People recoil from photos of children in poverty, and we recoil from the word "exploitation".
Fundamentally, however, the trade in recyclables and repairables, like the purchase of medicine, originates inside the emerging markets. People need, people look for, and people find opportunity. People from over there fly over here and buy stuff with their own money.
If "exploitation" applies at all, the act is initiated by the buyer who, I argue, is "exploiting" a weak repair market in a wealthy nations. Poor neighborhoods in the USA "exploit" used cars which they purchase from neighborhoods who buy new cars before their other car is worn out. The car seller is not "exploiting" the used car buyer, nor is the transaction of trading the car causing the poverty of the poor neighborhood.
A promising way to direct such revenues is through a blockchain-based refundable deposit system. In this model, minerals extracted from public lands would be “tagged” at the point of production with a small, built-in deposit—funded by the reclaimed royalty stream—that remains associated with the product through its useful life. Blockchain smart contracts would record each unit (e.g., a solar panel, laptop, EV battery) and automatically pay a refund to whoever returns the item for certified reuse or recycling. This prevents fraud, reduces administrative overhead, and ensures transparency: every dollar of royalty-derived subsidy can be traced from the mine to the consumer to the recycler.
The system scales well across global repair networks, allowing technicians in Ghana, Mexico, or Appalachia to scan a panel or device and instantly receive the deposit as a micro-payment.
By linking resource extraction to resource recovery, this approach corrects a historic imbalance. For generations, extraction has been rewarded while circularity has struggled to compete economically with landfilling or informal dumping. Using lost royalties to fund deposits creates a price signal that makes reuse and recycling profitable, even in the most rural or under-resourced regions where formal recycling systems are thin. It also incentivizes manufacturers to design for repairability, because a robust return value on end-of-life devices makes durable, modular products more attractive.
For future generations, the benefits compound. Redirecting extraction subsidies into a transparent blockchain deposit system conserves minerals, reduces the need for new mining, and lowers the ecological footprint of manufacturing. It also builds the infrastructure—financial, digital, and logistical—for a regenerative materials economy, where products are tracked, returned, and recovered rather than abandoned or exported as unmonitored waste. Ultimately, turning 19th-century extraction rules into 21st-century circular-economy tools ensures that the value of America’s public mineral resources is not just taken from the land, but reinvested into leaving the land—and the global commons—better for the generations that follow.